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robert_j_deane
Reviews
Rampage (2006)
I wasn't expecting this to be so good
I picked up a copy of Rampage at my local DVD store because I thought it was a movie, not a documentary. The idea of a movie about rappers coming back from the Iraq war and seeing parallels with their own war-torn suburbs was interesting.
As soon as it started I saw it was in fact a documentary, and I got a sinking feeling that I had been duped. I re-checked the DVD case and in tiny lettering at the bottom of the back cover there it was "documentary".
I continued watching anyway, and pretty soon I was enthralled. The documentary was bizarre for a few reasons. First off I wasn't expecting a documentary about US rappers to be written by an Australian, nor was I expecting to see anything new in a film about gang violence in the United States.
The documentary is set mostly in a poor mainly African American suburb in Miami. I had no idea Miami was as racially divided as it apparently is.
Documentary maker George Gittoes follows a US soldier he met while filming footage in the Iraq war. The soldier had told Gittoes his hometown was just as dangerous as Iraq, so the Australian journalist wanted to find out for himself.
It seems the soldier wasn't lying, and we see first hand how people in his suburb live, and how they cling to rapping as their one chance to get the hell out of there, especially one rather cute, troubled 14-year-old.
Black Sheep (2006)
Damn good movie. Scary in two ways.
I thought this movie was lots of fun. It is not really for intellectual heavyweights, but if you want to be entertained for an hour and a half, then this is definitely one to watch.
It certainly stereotypes New Zealanders in a way I bet will annoy them no end, but it probably points to the maturity of their nation that they can get away with sheep-sex jokes without it causing too much angst.
There were some great one-liners, and the special effects were quite sophisticated too. The psycho sheep looked quite real at times.
I am just wondering how they got the real sheep to act so convincingly, by running in the right direction at the right time, and going up to people etc. I owned sheep as a child, and they are dumb animals.